Jett was rudely awakened by a whip of Air striking him in the back.

He still had Ariel’s photo in his hands; he quickly tucked it into his shirt, positioning it above his heart. A suiting place for her to be when he died.

“Is it time?” Jett asked groggily. He forced himself upright. If he thought he felt stiff yesterday, today he was a wreck. His body seemed sore all over.

“Yup,” the familiar voice of the runt said. The little man was standing just outside the cell.

The witch guards, led by the runt, escorted Jett into the hallway and then the elevator. Today it went down.

“I’m looking forward to watching a dragon die,” the runt said during the descent.

“You won’t see much,” Jett said. “If it’s a Strength guillotine, then I’ll essentially be placed inside a box.”

“We’ll still see you,” the runt said. “President Kettleburn has attached cameras inside that box. Everything is going to be broadcast live. Not just to us, but the entire shifter Darknet.”

Great.

The elevator opened and Jett was led into the grand entrance hall. He gazed at the mural painted into the ceiling above, the same one Ariel had told him about: it depicted a lone witch facing off against a dragon at the fore of a vampire army.

We’ve been at war more often than peace throughout the centuries. The Wayfarers have never really liked us. Maybe dragons and witches were never meant to get along.

He reminded himself that the president of the Tower herself was a dragon shifter, and that she was the witch who had ordered his execution. Maybe she hated her own kind?

He was led through the main doors of the Tower to a part of the inner grounds he had never visited before. It was a large field hemmed in by foliage to the west, a series of outbuildings to the east, the wall that enclosed the grounds to the north, and the Steel Tower itself to the south.

And it was packed with witches and soldiers. The runt wasn’t the only one who wanted to see a dragon die, apparently. Many of them openly held smartphones in their hands, embedded cameras pointed his way, recording his walk of doom for their own personal libraries. Maybe they’d entertain family and friends later. “I was there for the execution of the dragon king,” they’d say.

There were very few apprentices among the bystanders, Jett noticed. They were probably all in Belgrade for their liberty. That meant a lot of Wayfarers would be away from the Tower as well, acting as deterrents to any Orions hoping to strike at young witches while they were vulnerable in the city. Those Wayfarers would probably be tuning in on the Darknet.

Still, it meant the tower wasn’t as full of witches as he had originally thought, and therefore not as well defended. Not that it helped him. There were still too many for Blue Hurricane and his three White Swords to overcome.

Even so he scanned the walkways and parapets lining the wall. He felt conflicted: the emotional part of him hoped to see members of the pride moving stealthily among them, preparing to pounce, while the logical part of him wanted no such thing. The logical part got its wish, because he observed only rifle-totting sentries on those walkways, most openly scowling at him.

He couldn’t help feeling disappointed at his abandonment, but quickly dismissed the emotion, hardening his resolve.

They did the right thing.

The runt continued to lead the way; the small witch paused to accept a black hood from a red-liveried servant and pulled it over his head. The little man was to be the executioner, apparently. The hood looked a little incongruous with the blazer and jeans the witch wore, and Jett might have laughed at the sight if he wasn’t on his way to the headman’s block.

Laughter. He remembered a time when he rarely even smiled. Ariel had changed all that.

He lifted his shackled hands and instinctively rubbed at his heart; he could feel the picture he had hidden in his shirt rubbing against his chest. He enjoyed the sensation: it felt like Ariel was with him. He definitely needed her to get through this.

Jett was brought to a stage and took the steps to the raised platform it contained. A large projector screen at the far side of the platform displayed video of him approaching. He hadn’t seen the cameraman.

At the center of the stage, behind Savanna, awaited an ornate chest big enough to fit a crouching man.

He was looking at his demise.

The entire chest was carved out of dragon bone. Jett had read about these things. When the lid was sealed, the executioner would touch the surface, and because of the sheer size of the bone structure, would be able to draw a huge amount of the Strength, far more than possible with a smaller piece of bone, bringing his Siphoning abilities to the level of a dragon witch. With so much power flowing through his veins, the executioner could easily create a Weave powerful enough to sever the head from a dragon shifter’s body.

The Strength provided by the bone chest was complete overkill, because Jett could be slain with far less given the collar that constrained him, but it did ensure that the beheading happened in one smooth, supposedly painless blow.

Wayfarers throughout the world used similar chests in their executions, and the deaths weren’t restricted solely to beheadings. They could just as easily incinerate anyone trapped inside, reducing the victim to a mere shadow permanently burned into the bottom of the chest.

Witches scheduled for execution by Strength Guillotine were drugged so that they couldn’t Siphon the Strength when placed in the chest. Since he wasn’t a witch, Jett had the unfortunate luxury of attending his own execution completely sober.

The runt led Jett past Savanna. Once more he noticed that strange scent as he passed her, the odd odor he had detected in her office at the top of the Steel Tower. Could it be...?

“Put him in the chest,” Savanna said coldly.

The witches escorting Jett threw gusts of Air at him, shoving him toward the death device.

He saw the shapes meticulously cut into the bone surface of the chest as he neared. The carvings were of Wayfarers in various poses of victory: a witch beheading a dragon with a sword; a witch impaling a vampire with a stake; a witch, arms wide, tearing apart a bear with the Strength. It was a veritable celebration of execution, and reminded him of what was to come.

Jett noticed the camera dome embedded in the trunk’s lid. He smiled wanly. They’d be switching over the stage projector feed to this camera as soon as the lid shut so that no one would miss his death. He felt like smashing that camera, but had no doubt it was shielded by Weaves of Air.

He stepped inside the chest. The lower half was stained black, a testament to where the bodies of previous victims had been burned away by Strength incineration. That fate was almost preferable to the ignominy of beheading.

He knelt on the hard surface and leaned forward so that the lid could be closed. He slid the photo of Ariel out of his shirt and placed it on the blackened bone beneath him so that her face would be the last thing he saw before he died. Hopefully there would be enough light in the chest to see her until the end. There should be, otherwise the lid camera would be useless after all.

“Close the lid,” Savanna said.

He felt a sudden panic. He wasn’t ready to die, not yet.

“Wait,” Jett said, lifting his upper body.

The president eyed him questioningly.

“I’m allowed last words, if I recall,” Jett said.

Savanna nodded curtly. “Make them quick.”

Jett ran his gaze across the witches who stood guarding the stage beside him, and the hooded runt who waited to execute him. His eyes drifted over to the crowd below, to the witch professors who recorded him with their smartphones, and then to the wall above, where the walkways teemed with soldiers.

So this is the end.

“I was a king once,” Jett said, what little dragon power he had left allowing his voice to carry to every ear in that courtyard. “I ruled all of North America. I gave it up for a woman. A shifter. A lioness. She came here to train. I followed her. What else could I do? I penetrated your security every weekend to see her, yet the only crime I have committed is to love. You’ve come to see how a dragon dies? Well I’ll show you.” He glanced at the runt. “Close the lid. Let’s get this done.”

With that, he knelt. He was ready now.

He stared at Ariel’s photo, steeling himself.

The last few moments of my existence. If there is an afterlife, I’ll see you there my love. And if there isn’t, the universe will weep for an eternity.

He waited. And waited. But the lid never closed.

Instead he heard shouts.

Confused, he sat up.

A huge red dragon was sweeping over the courtyard, breathing a stream of fire over the witches.

It was Flame.

After Flame made his pass, another dragon immediately swooped down. A glorious, bronze dragon. Brazen. He breathed a stream of coppery death, coating those witches who didn’t protect themselves in liquid bronze that hardened almost instantly, turning them into statues.

Finally, a magnificent white dragon, one of the biggest he had ever seen, tore down from the sky, raining death first upon the wall, and then the courtyard itself. Gwendoline. A beam of white light erupted from her mouth, incinerating witches left and right, dissolving straight through the shields of the weaker among them.

Savanna growled, and when she spoke, her voice resounded from the walls. “HOW DARE YOU!”

The president leaped off the stage and ran to the center of the field. She wrapped her fingers around the silver band at her neck and tore it away: the collar was fake. Then she began transforming. It wasn’t the smooth change typical of most dragons. Instead her body elongated in gruesome spurts, so that her features and body quickly became an oversized, lopsided parody of the woman she once one. But the general outline of a dragon soon began to take shape.

A commotion drew Jett’s attention away from Savanna. Lions were leaping up onto the walkways lining the walls and tearing into the soldiers. Blue Hurricane. Jett wasn’t sure how they were getting past the razor wire out there, but then a death-dealing Wayfarer dressed in a long flowing trench coat appeared on the wall beside them, firing his sawed-off into the soldiers while casting Strengthworks with his other hand, and Jett knew. Mathis.

The lions began leaping down into the courtyard to attack the witches. A vampire joined them. The last White Sword Jett had brought with him to Belgrade: Viper. Jett recognized him immediately because of the special black paint he had coating his face to protect him from the sun; that and the deadly way he handled the rifle he carried. A long hilt protruded from the top of his back, where a katana sat, ready to be drawn for any close-quarters fighting. He also wore a wide-brimmed hat, skin-tight gloves, and mirror shades: the tools of the trade for any vampire that wanted to fight in the daylight.

Oddly, there were also two bears out there, along with a panther, a falcon, an elk, and a wolf, all fighting alongside the lions.

Jett stood up in that bone chest to search for Ariel. Her lioness should have been easily recognizable by the streaks of white along her flanks, and the unique pattern of brown and yellow patches on her back, but he didn’t see her in the confusion. He knew she was out there, though. She had to be.

“Get inside that chest so I can kill you!” the runt said. The witch raised his hands toward Jett but then a bullet hole appeared in his head. He toppled.

Jett glanced at the wall; on the upper walkway, Mathis saluted with his sawed-off before turning his attention to a soldier who was rushing him.

Jett surveyed the stage. The other witches had already fled to join in the fighting.

He began to step outside the chest when an earth-shaking roar diverted his attention across the field, toward where Savanna had once stood: in her place a colossal red dragon blotted out the sun. Black stripes ran along her belly to the underside of her wings. She was even bigger than Gwendoline.

The terrible beast bent low and immediately took to the air, heading toward the three dragons that were coming in for their second attack run.

Even three against one, Jett knew Gwendoline, Flame and Brazen would struggle against her. Three ordinary dragons up against a dragon witch with the full power of the Strength flowing through her bones?

No, their battle wasn’t going to be easy, not by a long shot.